by Rudy Rucker
He stood up, still moving automatically, and went inside to rinse the food cavity out with water. And it wasn't till he was wiping it out with paper towels that he thought to notice anything strange about what he was doing.
He stopped then, a wad of paper towels in his hand, and stared down. The little door was metal on the inside and plastic flicker-cladding on the out. After he pushed it shut the skin dove-tailed so well that he couldn't find the top edge. He found the pressure switch again... just under his left nipple... and popped the little door back open. There were scratches on the metal... writing? It looked backwards, but he couldn't bend close enough to be sure.
Door flapping, Cobb went into the bathroom and examined himself in the mirror. Except for the hole in his chest he looked the same as ever. He felt the same as ever. But now he was a robot.
He pushed the little door all the way open, so that the metal inside was reflected in the mirror. There was a letter there, scratched in backwards.
Dear Dr. Anderson!
Welcome to your new hardware! Use it in good repair as a token of gratitude from the entire bopper race! User's Guide:
1) Your body's skeleton, muscles, processors, etc. are synthetic and self-repairing. Be sure, however, to recharge the power-cells twice a year. Plug is located in left heel.
2) Your brain-functions are partially contained in a remote super-cooled processor. Avoid electromagnetic shielding or noise-sources, as this may degrade the body-brain link. Travel should be undertaken only after consultation.
3) Every effort has been made to transfer your software without distortion. In addition we have built in a library of useful subroutines. Access under password BE-BOPALULA.
Respectfully yours,
The Big Boppers
Cobb sat down on the toilet and locked the bathroom door. Then he got up and read the letter again. It was still sinking in. Intellectually he had always known it was possible. A robot, or a person, has two parts: hardware and software. The hardware is the actual physical material involved, and the software is the pattern in which the material is arranged. Your brain is hardware, but the information in the brain is software. The mind... memories, habits, opinions, skills ... is all software. The boppers had extracted Cobb's software and put it in control of this robot body. Everything was working perfectly, according to plan. For some reason this made Cobb angry.
"Immortality, my ass," he said, kicking the bathroom door. His foot went through it.
"Goddamn stupid robot leg."
He unlocked the door and walked down the hall into the kitchen. Christ, he needed a drink. The thing that bothered Cobb the most was that even though he felt like he was all here, his brain was really inside a computer somewhere else. Where?
Suddenly he knew. The Mr. Frostee truck, of course. A super-cooled bopper brain was in that truck, with Cobb's software all coded up. It could simulate Cobb Anderson to perfection, and it monitored and controlled the robot's actions at the speed of light.
Cobb thought back to that interim time, before the simulation that was now him had hooked into a new body. There had been no distinctions, no nagging facts, only raw possibility... Thinking back to the experience opened up his consciousness in a strange way. As if he could let himself go and ooze out into the rooms and houses around him. For an instant he saw Annie's face staring out of a mirror, tweezers and tube of cream...
He was standing in front of the kitchen sink. He'd left the water running. He leaned forward and splashed some of it on his face. Something bumped the sink, oh yes, the door in his chest, and he pushed it closed. What had been that code word?
Cobb went back to the bathroom, opened the flap, and read the letter a third time. This time he got the little joke. The big boppers had put him in this body, and the code word for the library of subroutines was, of course,
"Be-Bop-A-Lu-La, she's mah baybee," Cobb sang, his voice echoing off the tiles, "Be-Bop-A-Lu-La, Ah don't mean maybee..."He stopped then, cocking his head to listen to an inner voice.
"Library accessed," it said.
"List present subroutines," Cobb commanded.
"MISTER FROSTEE, TIME-LINE, ATLAS, CALCULATOR, SENSE ACUITY, SELF-DESTRUCT, REFERENCE LIBRARY, FACT-CHUNKING, SEX, HYPER ACTIVITY, DRUNKENNESS ..."
"Hold it," Cobb cried. "Hold it right there. What does DRUNKENNESS involve?"
"Do you wish to call the subroutine?"
"First tell me what it does." Cobb opened the bathroom door and glanced out nervously. He thought he had heard something. It wouldn't do for him to be found talking to himself. If people suspected he was a robot they might lynch...
"... now activated," the voice in his head was saying in its calm, know-it-all tone. "Your senses and thought processes will be systematically distorted in a step-wise fashion. Close your right nostril and breathe in once through your left nostril for each step desired. Inhaling repeatedly through the right nostril will reverse these steps. There is, of course, an automatic override for your ..."
"O.K.," Cobb said. "Now stop talking. Log off. End it."
"The command you are searching for is OUT, Dr. Anderson."
"OUT, then."
The feeling of another presence in his mind winked out. He walked out onto the back porch and stared at the ocean for awhile. The bad smell from the rotten fish drifted in. Cobb found a piece of cardboard and took it out to scoop the mess up. Re-charge power-cells twice a year.
He dumped the stinking fish down by the water's edge and walked back to his cottage. Something was bothering him. How likely was it that this new body was a token of gratitude with no strings attached?
Obviously the body had been sent to Earth with certain built-in programs... break out of the warehouse, tell Cobb Anderson to go to the Moon, stick your head in the first Mr. Frostee truck you see. The big question was: were there any more programs waiting to be carried out? Worse: were the boppers in a position to control him on a real-time basis? Would he notice the difference? Who, in short, was in charge now, Cobb ... or a big bopper called Mr. Frostee?
His mind felt clear as a bell, clear as a goddamn bell. Suddenly he remembered the other robot. Cobb went in through the porch and down the short hall to his bedroom. The bopper-built body that had looked like Sta-Hi was still lying there. Its features had gone slack and sagging. Cobb leaned over the body, listening. Not a sound. This one was turned off.
Why? "The real Sta-Hi is coming back," the truck-driver had said. So they wanted to get this one out of circulation before it was exposed as a robot. It had been standing in for Sta-Hi, working with Mooney at the spaceport. The plan had been for the robot to smuggle a whole lot more robot-remotes through customs and out of the warehouses. It had mentioned this to Cobb one day while they were fishing. Why so many robots?
Tokens of gratitude, each and every one? No way. What did the boppers want?
He heard the screen-door slap then. It was Annie. She'd done something to her hair and face. Seeing him, she shone like a sunflower.
"It's almost six, Cobb. I thought maybe we should walk over to the Gray Area now and have some supper there first?" He could feel her fragile happiness as clearly as if it were his own. He walked over and kissed her.
"You look beautiful." She had on a loose Hawaiian-print dress.
"But you, Cobb, you should change your clothes!"
"Right."
She followed him into his bedroom and helped him find the white-duck pants and the black sport-shirt she'd gotten ready for tonight.
"What about him?" Annie asked, whispering and pointing at the inert figure on Cobb's bed.
"Let him sleep. Maybe he'll pull through." The truck would come get him while they were out. Good riddance.
He could see through her eyes as he dressed. His new body wasn't quite as fat as the old one, and the clothes fit, for once, without stretching.
"I was afraid you'd be drunk," Annie said hesitantly.
"I could use a quick one," Cobb said. His new sensitivity to other people's
thoughts and feelings was almost too much to take. "Wait a second."
Presumably the DRUNKENNESS subroutine was still activated. Cobb went into the kitchen, pressed his finger to his right nostril, and inhaled deeply. A warm feeling of relaxation hit him in the pit of the stomach and the backs of the knees, spreading out from there. It felt like a double shot of bourbon.
"That's better," Cobb murmured. He opened and closed the kitchen cupboard to sound as if he'd had a bottle out. Another quick snort, and then Annie came in. Cobb felt good.
"Let's go, baby. We'll paint the town red."
Chapter Twenty
"They're collecting human brain-tapes," Sta-Hi said as his father parked the car. "And sometimes they take apart the person's body, too, to seed their organ tanks. They've got a couple hundred brains on tap now. And at least three of those people have been replaced by robot doubles. There's Cobb, and one of the Little Kidders, and a stewardess. And there's still that robot who looks like me. Your surrogate son."
Mooney turned off the ignition and stared out across the shopping-center's empty parking lot. An unpleasant thought struck him.
"How do I know you're real now, Stanny? How do I know you're not another machine like the one that had me fooled all week?"
The answering laugh was soft and bitter. "You don't. I don't. Maybe the diggers switched me over while I was sleeping." Sta-Hi savored the worry on his father's face. My son the cyborg. Then he relented.
"You don't have to worry, Dad. The diggers wouldn't really do that. It's just the big boppers that are into it. The diggers only work there, making the tunnels. They're on our side, really. They've started a full-scale revolution on the Moon. Who knows, in a month there may be no big boppers left at all."
A dog ran across the parking lot. keeping an eye on their car. They could hear loud rock music from two blocks away. The pheezers were having some kind of party at the Gray Area bar tonight. In the distance the surf beat, and a cooling night breeze flickered in and out of the car windows.
"Well, Stanny..."
"Call me Sta-Hi, Dad. Which reminds me. You holding?"
Mooney rummaged in his glove compartment. There should be a pack of reefer in there somewhere... he'd confiscated it from one of his men who'd been smoking on duty... there it was.
"Here, Sta-Hi. Make yourself at home."
Sta-Hi pulled a face at the crumpled pack of cheap roach-weed, but lit up nonetheless. His first hit of anything since back at the Disky Hilton with that Misty girl. It had been a rough week hiding out in the pink-houses and then getting smuggled back to earth as a shipment of spare innards. Rough. He smoked down the first jay and lit another. The music outside focused into note-for-note clarity.
"I bet old Anderson's at that party," Mooney said, rolling up his window. Damned if he was going to sit here while his son smoked a whole pack of dope. "Let's go check out his house, Sta-Hi."
"O.K." The dope was hitting Sta-Hi hard... he'd lost his tolerance. His legs were twitching and his teeth were chattering. A dark stain of death-fear spread across his mind. Carefully, he put the pack of reefers in his pocket. Must be good stuff after all.
Father and son walked across the parking lot, behind the stores and onto the beach. The moon, past full, angled its silvery light down onto the water. Crabs scuttled across their path and nipped into hidey-holes. It had been a long time since the two of them had walked together. Mooney had to hold himself back from putting an arm across his son's shoulders.
"I'm glad you're back," he said finally. "That robot copy of you ... it always said yes. It was nice, but it wasn't you."
Sta-Hi flashed a quick smile, then patted his father on the back. "Thanks. I'm glad you're glad."
"Why..." Mooney's voice cracked and he started again. "Why can't you settle down now, Stanny? I could help you find a job. Don't you want to get married and ..."
"And end up like you and Ma? No thanks." Too harsh. He tried again. "Sure I'd like to have a job, to do something important. But I don't know anything. I can't even learn how to play the guitar good. I'm only ..." Sta-Hi spread his hands and laughed helplessly, "I'm only good at waving ... at being cool. It's the only thing I've learned how to do in twenty-four years. What else can I do?"
"You ..." Mooney fell silent, thinking. "Maybe you could make something out of this adventure you've had. Write a story or something. Hell, Stanny, you're meant to be a creative person. I don't want to see you end up wearing a badge like me. I could have been an illustrator, but I never made my move. You have to take that first step. No one can do it for you."
"I know that, too. But whenever I start something it's like I'm ... a nobody who doesn't know anything. Mr. Nobody from Nowhere. And I can't process that. If I'm not going to win out anyway, I'd rather just..."
"You've got a good brain," Mooney told his son for what must have been the thousandth time. "You tested 92nd percentile on the MAGs and then you ..."
"Yeah, yeah," Sta-Hi said, suddenly impatient. "Let's talk about something else. Like what are we going to do at Cobb's house anyway?" They had walked a couple of kilometers. The cottages couldn't be much further.
"You're sure they built robots to look like you and like Anderson?" Mooney asked.
"Right. But I don't know if the robots still look like us or not. They use this stuff called flicker-cladding for the skin, and it's full of little wires so if you pass different currents through it, the stuff looks different."
"But you figure Anderson's in one of these robots now?"
"Come shot! For sure. I saw a nursie taking him apart. It..." Sta-Hi broke off, laughing hard. Suddenly, with a reefer in him, the image of Cobb lying down in that giant toothed vagina ... it was too funny for words. It was so good to be stoned again.
"But why lure you and him all the way up to the Moon just to tape your brain-patterns?"
"I don't know. Maybe they respect him too much to just kidnap him and eat his brain like anyone else. Or maybe they don't have any really good brain-dissecting machinery down here. And me ... they just wanted to get me out of sight any way that ..."
"Ssshhhh. We're there."
Thirty meters to their right was Cobb Anderson's cottage, silhouetted against the moon-bright sky. The light was bright enough to show the Mooney's up clearly, should anyone... anything ... be looking. They doubled back to where a stand of palms reached down to near the water's edge and crept up to the cottages, staying in shadow.
The cottages were dark and deserted. It seemed like all the pheezers were out partying this Friday night. Mooney and Sta-Hi sidled along the cottage walls until they came to Cobb's. Mooney held them there, listening for a long two minutes. There was only the regular crash and hiss of the sea.
Sta-Hi followed his father in through the screen door and onto the porch. So this was where old Cobb had lived. Looked pleasant enough. Sta-Hi looked forward to being a pheezer himself someday... which only left about forty more years to waste.
Mooney put on a pair of goggles and flicked on his infra-red snooper light. He'd forgotten to bring it last Friday. He looked the room over. Lipsticked cigarette butts, baby oil, a wet bikini... signs of female occupancy.
That old white-haired babe was still living here. All week she'd been here with, Mooney now realized, Cobb's robot double. The two of them had been living here together waiting, though she didn't know it, for Cobb's mind to show up. Had it?
Briefly Mooney wondered if the robots could fuck. He could use a bionic cock himself, to keep Bea happy. If that whore hadn't always been sneaking out to the sex-clubs, Stanny never would have...
"What the fuck are you doing?" Sta-Hi demanded loudly. "Talking to yourself? I can't see a damn thing."
"Hussshhhhh. Put these on. I forgot." Mooney handed Sta-Hi the second pair of infra-light goggles.
The room cleared up for Sta-Hi then. The light was so red it looked blue. "Let's try the bedroom," he suggested.
"O.K."
Mooney led the way again. When he pushed ope
n the bedroom door and shone his snooper light in, he had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. Stanny was lying there, his features blurred and melted, the nose flopped over to one side and sagging down the check, the folded hands puddled like mittens.
Sta-Hi let out a low hissing noise and stepped forward, leaning over the inert robot on Cobb's bed. "Here's your perfect son, Dad. Be the first one on your block to see your boy come home in a box. The big boppers must have found out I was back. One of us had to go-"
"But what's happened to it?" Mooney asked, approaching hesitantly. "It looks half-melted."
"It's a robot-remote. The central processor must have turned it off. There's a circuit in there for holding the flicker-cladding in shape, but ..."
There was the sudden crunch of gravel, so close it seemed to be in the room with them. An engine was running, and a heavy door slammed. People were coming!
There was no time to run out through the house. Feet were already pounding up the front steps. Mooney grabbed his son and pulled him into Anderson's closet. There was no time to say anything to each other.
"Mr. Fwostee thaid he'th in the bedwoom, Buhdoo."
"Hey, Rainbow! Git yore skanky ass in here and help me lug this sucker out!"
"Ah don't see wha you big strong meyun cain't do it alone."
"I thtarted a hewnia yethterday witting thomething."
"Liftin whut, Hat-N-Haf, yore pecker?"
The three voices shared a moment of laughter at this sally.
"The Little Kidders," Sta-Hi breathed into his father's ear. Mooney elbowed him sharply for silence. A coat-hanger rattled, oh shit, but the voices were still out in the living-room.
"This's a naahce pad, ain't it, Berdoo?"
"Y'all want one lank it, Rainbow honey? Stick with me an yore gonna be fartin through silk."